G.O.P. Gains Strength on N.Y. City Council, as a Democrat Breaks Ranks

As a first-term Democrat on the New York City Council, it might seem logical that Ari Kagan would want to curry favor with his party, which has an overwhelming majority within the 51-member body. Instead, he did the politically unthinkable this month: He switched parties to join the Council’s five other Republicans.

For Mr. Kagan, who represents a district in South Brooklyn that is becoming more conservative, the move might be to his political advantage when he seeks re-election next year — even if it means a loss of power and influence on the Council. But Mr. Kagan said that he believed that the Democratic Party, especially in New York, had drifted too far to the left.

“It’s not me leaving the Democratic Party,” Mr. Kagan said. “The Democratic Party started to leave me.”

Across New York City, where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, there are signs of Republicans making inroads. In the most recent midterm elections, every county in the city voted more Republican than it did in the 2020 presidential election, and three Democratic members of the State Assembly lost to Republicans in South Brooklyn.

Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor, won Staten Island by 19 points more than Republicans won the borough in the 2020 presidential election. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, won the governor’s race by the smallest margin in over 30 years — in part because of how well Mr. Zeldin did in parts of New York City.

“Ten years ago, our party was somewhat on the decline. We were fractured, we were disjointed, we were losing voters,” Joseph Borelli, the Council’s Republican minority leader, said at the news conference announcing Mr. Kagan’s switch. “I think today is a sign that the opposite is happening.”

Some on the far left have accused Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat who is a former registered Republican, of serving as an unspoken ally to Republicans. Mr. Adams regularly criticizes left-leaning Democrats, including members of the Council, as damaging to the party’s electoral hopes.

The mayor also has a working relationship with Mr. Borelli. That became evident when Mr. Borelli’s Republican appointees to a City Council districting commission joined with Mr. Adams’s appointees in an unsuccessful bid to push through Council maps that would have benefited Republicans by keeping all three G.O.P. districts on Staten Island contained within the borough, while hurting some progressive Democrats in Brooklyn.

The Council maps that were ultimately created as part of the once-in-a-decade redistricting process still increased the chance that newly drawn districts might be won by Republicans in next year’s election, according to an analysis by the CUNY Mapping Service.

Still badly outnumbered, the Republican contingent on the Council will be hard-pressed to pass partisan legislation, but it can still create, if not shape, debate. Its members oppose vaccine mandates, filed a lawsuit to invalidate noncitizen voting, used the word “groomer” in opposition to drag queen story hour in public schools and are vocal proponents of more stringent policing tactics.

The disagreements in policy have led to volatile clashes, which only underscore the widening gulf between the City Council’s leftist faction and its handful of Republican members.

Tiffany Cabán, a Queens councilwoman who is on the progressive caucus and leads the Committee on Women and Gender Equity, received threatening emails and calls from the public about being raped and “sliced” with a machete, along with derogatory and vulgar comments about her Latina heritage and sexual orientation earlier this fall.

The threats, which were reviewed by The New York Times, closely followed an appearance by one of her Republican Council colleagues on Fox News. The Republican councilwoman, Joann Ariola, called Ms. Cabán a “chaos inciter” for suggesting ways that small-business owners could deal with homeless or mentally ill people without calling the police.

“What they’re doing is part and parcel of that far-right playbook,” Ms. Cabán said of her Republican colleagues. “You whip up fear and hatred of people of color, queer people and you foment political violence. It’s what Tucker Carlson does every day. It’s what Marjorie Taylor Greene does.”

In June, Vickie Paladino, a Republican councilwoman from Queens, denounced a group that sends drag queens into schools to read to children to promote diversity, characterizing it as “degeneracy.”

Ms. Paladino accused colleagues who supported the program as accepting of “child grooming and sexualization.” Those remarks were heavily criticized by progressive council members, including Erik Bottcher, a gay councilman who represents Chelsea and the West Village.

Earlier this week, protesters opposed to drag queen story hour events at libraries wrote homophobic slurs on the sidewalk outside Mr. Bottcher’s apartment building, and two people were arrested. His office was also besieged by protesters and vandalized.

“Vickie Paladino’s comments are a wake-up call,” Mr. Bottcher said. “The amount of support she’s getting from some corners in New York City are a wake-up call that we have a pretty significant population of people who hold these ultra-right-wing views.”

The current Council body is one of the most diverse and progressive in the organization’s history. Adrienne Adams is the first-ever Black Council speaker, a majority of those serving are women and the Council has its first South Asian members. There is also ideological diversity: Along with the Council’s half-dozen Republicans are several members who identify as socialists.

Corey Johnson, the previous Council speaker, said that he dealt with divisive issues, such as police funding after the killing of George Floyd, and that he had to discipline members for making derogatory comments.

Still, the City Council maintains some level of collegiality, even during times of disagreement. But Mr. Johnson said the Council was now following a national pattern of increasing polarization.

“With social media exacerbating the divides that people have politically, and with more members who are further left and more members who are further right, it has inflamed things,” Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Borelli called the slurs directed against Mr. Bottcher “disgusting,” but said the push and pull between parties was natural. “People elect the members in my conference to engage and oppose progressive policies in the same way that folks elect people like Councilwoman Cabán and others to advance progressive policy,” he said.

Justin Brannan, a councilman from southern Brooklyn who will likely face a challenge from Mr. Kagan in next year’s City Council election, wasted no time in mocking Mr. Kagan’s switch to the Republican Party on social media. Democrats should do a better job of “talking to voters in a serious way about the things that they’re concerned about,” Mr. Brannan said. But the fight over ideology between Republicans and Democrats was making it more difficult to break through, he added.

“I post something about a Christmas tree lighting and, inevitably, someone starts screaming about bail reform,” Mr. Brannan said.

A spokesman for Ms. Adams said the Council speaker was dedicated to moving Democratic priorities forward: “Speaker Adams is focused on working to support and strengthen the Democratic majority of the Council, advancing its agenda.”

In spite of her efforts, some think the party clashes are not likely to stop.

“We’ve got so much vitriol now,” said Robert Holden, a conservative Democrat from Queens who has joined with Mr. Kagan and the five pre-existing Council Republicans to form the Common-Sense Caucus, a group focused on quality-of-life issues. “I didn’t see that in the last Council.”

Mr. Holden also crossed party lines to endorse Mr. Zeldin’s bid for governor, attending a rally in Queens late in the campaign.

“I’m a Democrat, but I’m crossing party lines,” Mr. Holden said. “Why? Because all you have to do is look what’s happening in New York City.”